Abstract

This book was conceived by the members of TESES, who are mostly professors at the UACh. It contains contributions by some researchers of TESES plus distinguished researchers from around the world, combining the fields of economics, ecology, biology, anthropology, sociology, and statistics. It is not, however, simply a collection of works written by the authors from different disciplines, but rather, each chapter attempts to be in itself transdisciplinary. We acknowledge that a trans- disciplinary effort to progress toward sustainable management of natural resources is long standing, but we hope that this book will be a significant contribution to enhancing social, managerial, and political approaches to forestry management, helping to protect forest ecosystem functions and services. his, in turn, should benefit local communities and society as a whole, as it reduces the negative externalities of forestry management and enhances future opportunities. This book attempts to give a transdisciplinary approach to find ecological- economic and socio-ecological strategies for forest conservation. It combines economic, ecological, and social aspects related to forest conservation strategies to provide a holistic view of this complex topic. Overall, a nice outcome of transdisciplinarity would be achieving governance systems that are able to sustain natural and social communities. In this way, we wish to contribute to the design of a resilient human-forest model that takes into account the multiculturalism of local communities, including aspects of ecological economics, development economics, and land use planning. The book mixes theoretical concepts – some might even be categorized as philosophical – and practical approaches in Brazil and Chile, providing concrete lessons based on real experiences in the region. Although it focuses on cases in Brazil and Chile, the results might be applied to other regions too, i.e., we hope that the case studies and proposals provided will be useful for a broad audience of readers concerned with natural resource sustainability.